ACTA

Experiments on Interlayer Exchange Coupling

P. Grünberg^a, M. Schaefer^a, K. Takanashi^b, U. Rücker^a, J. Nassar^a and I. Mertig^c
^aForschungszentrum Jülich GmbH - IFF, 52425 Jülich, Germany
^bInstitute for Materials Research, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-77, Japan
^cInstitut für Theoretische Physik, Technische Universität Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany

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The results of various experiments on interlayer exchange coupling will be reviewed. After a general discussion of the theoretical understanding we deal first with 90°-type coupling and show that two mechanisms proposed by Slonczewski can explain our measured data. We furthermore study the coupling of Fe films across Cu_xAu_1-x alloys. For the composition with x=0.5, the coupling strength strongly increases with annealing. We believe that this is due to an order-disorder structural transformation in the Cu_xAu_1-x alloy. Finally, we present results on epitaxially grown bilayers Fe/EuS(100) and trilayers Fe/EuS/Fe(100). In the latter at room temperature we observe a strong decrease in the coupling strength as a function of the interlayer thickness, with a characteristic length of about 0.1 nm. At low temperatures in the bilayer we find an antiferromagnetic coupling between Fe and the adjacent ferromagnetic EuS.

DOI: 10.12693/APhysPolA.91.7
PACS numbers: 75.70.-i, 75.30.Et, 75.70.Cn